Pages

06 April 2018

It's All Happening....

A HOLE IN THE SUN'S ATMOSPHERE: A wide gash in the sun's atmosphere is spewing solar wind toward Earth. Estimated time of arrival: April 9th. G1-classgeomagnetic storms are possible when the gaseous material reaches our planet. Free: Aurora Alerts.

THE GREAT WALL OF PLASMA: Around the world, amateur astronomers are monitoring a wall of hot plasma rising up from the sun's southeastern limb. This shot comes from Barry Riu at the Deerlick Astronomy Village in Georgia: (see image above)

The structure is more than 40,000 km high. In other words, you could balance three Earths, on one top of another, and the stack would still not reach over the top of this fiery barrier.

"These dimensions made it an easy target for my 4.5 inch refractor with a Daystar solar filter," says Riu. Images from other observatories show that the prominence is changing rapidly with time. Monitoring is encouraged!